The 2022 Disability Data Report

Realizing the rights of persons with disabilities Achieving rights as stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires quality, timely and policy-relevant disability data. This Report first reviews disability questions in national population censuses and household surveys globally from 2009 to 2021 to assess if they can identify persons with disabilities. Only 21% of the datasets under review have disability questions that meet international standards of comparability, i.e., those that collect information on functional difficulties (e.g. difficulty seeing, hearing, walking). Only 10% of datasets have the internationally-tested and comparable Washington Group Short Set (WG-SS) of questions. Including the WG-SS in many MICS6 (round 6 of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey) datasets has improved data availability for many countries. Much work remains for national surveys and population censuses to have functional difficulty questions. International programs, for instance, through COVID-19 High-Frequency Phone Surveys or the Survey of Income and Living Conditions, could help to improve the availability of disability questions in many countries and inform policy. Second, this Report disaggregates 32 indicators by disability status using data from MICS6 for women aged 18 to 49 in 35 countries. Disability status is measured through the functional difficulty questions of the WG-SS.We find inequalities associated with functional difficulties in all areas of wellbeing, particularly educational attainment, information and communication technology, sexual and reproductive health, multidimensional poverty, reporting being discriminated against, feeling safe, and subjective wellbeing. While most of the countries under study have ratified the CRPD, results suggest that more data collection, research and policy work are needed to address intersectional disadvantages and improve the situation of women with disabilities worldwide.For some indicators, there is a graded association between the severity of functional difficulty and of disadvantage. In other words, women with some functional difficulty are, on average worse off than women with no difficulty but better off than women who report a lot of difficulty or unable to do in at least one domain.In the countries under study, less than 20% of women with seeing difficulties use glasses, while only 2% of women with hearing difficulties use hearing aids. This result suggests a lack of assistive technology and related services that requires policy attention.Overall, the disadvantages that women with disabilities face within their economies and societies highlight the need for policies, data and research that support their rights and wellbeing.